The Round TabletteFounding Editor: James W. Gerber, MD (1951–2009)

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Thursday, 11 Jan. 201831:06 Volume 31 Number 6Published by WW II History Round TableWritten by Drs. Connie Harris & Christopher Simerwww.mn-ww2roundtable.orgHappy New Year and Welcome to the Jan-uary meeting of the Dr. Harold C. Deutsch World War II History Round Table. Once again this year we return to the Russian Front and a chilly topic, the Battle of Stalingrad. Tonight’s speaker is Jonathan House who, with David Glantz, coauthored Stalingrad. He will be joined by veterans from the Eastern Front.

The Second World War in Europe was won and lost on the Eastern Front. The sheer scale and intensity of the fight to the death between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union was un-precedented in the history of warfare. The most decisive battle of the Eastern Front, and thus of World War II in Europe, was the Battle of Stalin-grad, which lasted from the initial German of-fensive in the summer of 1942 to early February, 1943.

Both Germany and the Soviet Union were exhausted by the stalemate that was the final result of the massive Barbarossa offensive which had failed, barely, to take Moscow by December 1941. Thus, both sides envisioned decisive of-fensive operations, once the weather allowed them, in spring and summer of 1942. Hitler, unable to attack everything all at once as he had in 1941, recognized that inadequate petroleum resources placed profound limitations on every aspect of Germany’s military operations (from reducing U-boat missions to forcing pauses dur-ing Panzer offensives). Thus, in 1942, Hitler chose not move against Moscow again (as Stalin believed he would), his forces would instead head south, into the Don River Basin, aiming to seize the Caucasus region through Grozny in Chechnya and the oil fields on the Caspian Sea.

Under Operation Blue, for the1000 km drive into the Caucasus, Hitler divided Army Group South into two elements- Army Group South(A) under Field Marshal von Kleist would drive into the Caucasus, while Army Group South (B) con-sisting of the 4th Panzer Army under Hermann Hoth and the 6th Army under Friedrich Paulus would secure the flank of the Caucasus forces by crossing the Don and advancing to the Volga.

After much fighting (and some redirections by Hitler), these forces advanced towards Stalin-

grad on the Volga which was to be the anchor of the line protecting the exposed northern flank of Army Group (A) moving deeper into the Caucasus. Thus, the two parts of Army Group South would not be able to support each other as they each advanced in different direc-tions, one south and one east. Russian leaders realized that the Germans would try and take Stalingrad, a city 12 miles long on the western shore of the Volga, and began (by late July) reinforcing the city. The defense of the city was entrusted to Vasily Chuikov, leader of the 62nd Army.

German forces reached the outskirts of the city after intense battles north of town and by August the two sides were engaged in a fero-cious struggle in the devastated urban center. Stalin had forbidden civilians to evacuate, as he thought this would inspire the defenders; the battle went on for months, literally block to block, often house to house, and room to room combat. Russians poured unit after unit into the city. They were too often wiped out within days and replaced by new doomed units. Soviet forces were soon only supplied from across the river, and German forces were protected on their 400 km flanks by thinly spread, inade-quately supplied, and poorly-equipped Hungar-ian, Romanian and Italian units. Russian tactics were to “cling” to the Germans to prevent ef-fective artillery fire, and the Russians were shot by their own forces if they retreated: “Not one step back” was Stalin’s order. As fall came, the Germans reduced the Soviet held territory to essentially a bridgehead, but they never took the city.

Then, in November, a Soviet counter-offen-sive planned by Marshals Aleksandyr Vasi-lyevskiy and Georgi Zhukov (Operation Uranus) smashed through the weak flanks north and south of the 6th Army in Stalingrad held by the Germans’ allies. When Soviet forces linked up west of the city near Kalach on November 22, some 250,000 German and allied forces were trapped in a ring of steel and completely surrounded.

Hermann Goering had promised that air supply would keep them fighting, but only a fraction of the necessary materiel was ever delivered. The rest of Army Group South (A) was extricated from the Caucasus in desperate fighting; but an effort to break through the So-viet ring around Stalingrad to allow the 6th

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Army to withdraw was a failure because Hitler refused to allow Paulus to fight his way west to be relieved. Thus, the Sixth Army was trapped 250 km from the nearest German forces. Then the Red Army began to tighten the noose it had around the 6th Army.

By January 25th the last German airfields were overrun by Soviet troops, and the Germans maintained a last ditch defense in utterly hope-less conditions. Over 90,000 Axis forces surren-dered on February 2, 1943. After Stalingrad, the Germans never won another major battle. The pivot point of World War Two had been reached, and the Soviets, at enormous cost, had finally shattered the German blitzkrieg.

FURTHER READINGS: David Glantz & Jonathan House, Stalingrad (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2017)Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943 (New York: Penguin Books, 1999)Jochen Hellbeck, Stalingrad: The City that De-feated the Third Reich (New York: Public Affairs, 2015)William Craig, Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad (New York: Penguin Books, 2010 ed. )

Announcements:Twin Cities Civil War Round Table -16 Jan. 2018 – Civil War Surgeon Maxwell & Iowa Soldiers’ Aid- www.tccwrt.com - info@tccwrt.comSt. Croix Valley Civil War Round Table - 22 Jan. 2018 – Two Families in the Civil War - 715-386-1268 - rossandhaines@comcast.netFort Snelling Civil War Symposium - 7 Apr. 2018 - info@tccwrt.comMinnesota Military Museum, Camp Ripley, 15000 Hwy 115, Little Falls, MN 56345, 320-616-6050, http://www.mnmilitarymuseum.org/ Minnesota Air Guard Museum - www.mnangmuseum.org 612-713-2523Friends of Ft. Snelling, www.fortsnelling.orgWorld Without Genocide, 651-695-7621, http://www.-worldwithoutgenocide.org/Fagen Fighters WWII Museum, Granite Falls, MN, 320-564-6644, Air show - 16 June 2018. http://www.fa-genfighterswwiimuseum.org.Airshow - Eden Prairie - 14-15 July 2018www.wotn.org 952-746-6100Military History Book Club, Har Mar Barnes & Noble: - Toll, Conquering Tide - 31 Jan. 2018 - sdaubenspeck52@gmail.com Honor Flight - Jerry Kyser - crazyjerry45@hotmail - 651-338-2717CAF - Commemorative Air Force - www.cafmn.org 651-455-6942

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Round Table Schedule 20188 Feb. Berlin Airlift8 Mar. American Airpower in World War II22 Mar. OSS Woman v. Imperial Japan

12 Apr. Lucian Truscott: Greatest Field CO10 May Marshall Plan: Saving Victory